“Now, now!” he objected, severely. “We can't take a confession like that.”
Garson shook his head—spoke with fiercer hatred, “because he was a skunk, and a stool-pigeon,” he repeated. “Have you got it?” And then, as the stenographer nodded assent, he went on, less violently: “I croaked him just as he was going to call the bulls with a police-whistle. I used a gun with smokeless powder. It had a Maxim silencer on it, so that it didn't make any noise.”
Garson paused, and the set despair of his features lightened a little. Into his voice came a tone of exultation indescribably ghastly. It was born of the eternal egotism of the criminal, fattening vanity in gloating over his ingenuity for evil. Garson, despite his two great virtues, had the vices of his class. Now, he stared at Burke with a quizzical grin crooking his lips.
“Say,” he exclaimed, “I'll bet it's the first time a guy was ever croaked with one of them things! Ain't it?”
The Inspector nodded affirmation. There was sincere admiration in his expression, for he was ready at all times to respect the personal abilities of the criminals against whom he waged relentless war.
“That's right, Joe!” he said, with perceptible enthusiasm.
“Some class to that, eh?” Garson demanded, still with that gruesome air of boasting. “I got the gun, and the Maxim-silencer thing, off a fence in Boston,” he explained. “Say, that thing cost me sixty dollars, and it's worth every cent of the money.... Why, they'll remember me as the first to spring one of them things, won't they?”
“They sure will, Joe!” the Inspector conceded.
“Nobody knew I had it,” Garson continued, dropping his braggart manner abruptly.
At the words, Mary started, and her lips moved as if she were about to speak.